L'accordo e la decisione. Modelli culturali e strategie di gestione dei conflitti

The spread of methods of conflict solving alternative to the standard model of legal proceedings in court seems to have progressed beyond its first exclusively utilitarian phase, whose function was to take some of the pressure off the ordinary courts. The time has now come to study the various different orientation strategies that provide the backdrop, both culturally and institutionally, to the instruments typical of negotiated conflict solving, such as mediation. Legal anthropology and investigations of what can be described, broadly speaking, as traditional legal systems are reappraising the focal role played by the models of legality and justice that dominate in modern Western societies, demonstrating that ample use has been made of informal conflict solving procedures in the course of history by a large number of cultures. China’s experience is of particular interest in this regard, because it showcases a major and lasting political and institutional situation that has relied primarily on this kind of procedure to maintain its internal legal order, in time elaborating social conflict management systems whose complexity is comparable to what has gradually developed in the West around the instruments whose antecedents can be traced back to the legal model.

Giovanni Cosi, L'accordo e la decisione. Modelli culturali e strategie di gestione dei conflitti in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 3/2007, pp 47-96, DOI: